onsdag 25. februar 2015

February is drawing to a close and since I will be practically offline for the remaining days, my final blogpost for this month is a short and very evocative poem by Derek Walcott, my favourite contemporary poet. I have on previous occasions posted other poems by him (here and here), and he is one of my go-to poets when I need something that's suitable for any occasion.

Cosimo I de Medici in armour (c.1545)By Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72)Courtesy of Wikimedia

The Prince

Genderers of furies, crouching, slavering beaststhose paps that gave me suck! His dragonish scalesare velvet-sheated, even at those feastsare coiling tongues. Lust has not souredthat milky stomach. Something more than lovemyfather lacked which God will not approve:

a savage sundering sword, vile to the touchbreeding fidelity by its debauch.Calm, she reclines on her maternal couch,knitting revenge and lechery in my head.I ease the sword, and, like her victim, quaking,I, in my father, stalk my father's dread.

søndag 22. februar 2015

Today, February 22, is the feast-day of Margaret
da Cortona (c.1247-97), and in this blogpost I wish to give a very brief
overview of her life and posthumous reputation, which was caught up in the
religious fervor of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century vogue of sanctity,
and she was at the same time a typical representative of this religiosity, and
also in certain ways slightly at odds with the criteria of sainthood at that
time.

Margaret’s life was shaped by her attempts to navigate between the many sorrows
and misfortunes she became subject to. She was born to a family of farmers in
Tuscany, and she lost her mother at a young age. Her father remarried, but
Margaret was ill-treated by her stepmother, and it might have been this conflict
which made her succumb to the seduction of Arsenio, a knight from Montepulciano
whose mistress she was for nine years, and with whom she bore a son. The knight
was in the end murdered and Margaret and her son returned to her father’s
house, but since her stepmother convinced Margaret’s father not to take her
back, she was forced to seek help among the Franciscans. She and her son were
taken care of by two ladies apparently connected with the order, and in the
next years Margaret undertook a long and harsh series of public penitence for
her former life outside wedlock.

Margaret da Cortona making the devil weep

Gaspare Traversi (c.1722-70)

Typical of thirteenth-century ideals of
holiness, Margaret performed several acts of mortification, but in abhorrence
of her past – no doubt exacerbated by the emotional distress brought on by her
family’s rejection – she even went so far as self-mutilation. She was also said
to mistreat her son. After years in extreme penitence, Margaret was allowed
into the Third Order of St. Francis and thus became a Franciscan tertiary, a
typical feature of many of the saints of late medieval Italy. In her life as a
tertiary, Margaret dedicated her time to nursing the poor, yet retained a life
of austerity marked by a harsh diet, little sleep and mortification by a
haircloth worn next to the skin. She founded the hospital of Santa Maria della
Misericordia at Cortona, and in that city she also started preaching to call
people to repentance after having had received a call to do so in one of her
numerous visions. She appears to have been somewhat successful in her
preaching, but despite her successes in her religious work, it appears she was
the subject of much slander and opprobrium, which added to her distress.

After her death, it was reported that cures were
given at her tomb, and she is said to have “attracted visitors from other parts
of Italy and even further afield” (Farmer 2004: 345). Her spiritual life was
recorded in Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margharitae de Cortona,
which was written by Giunta Bevignate, a friar minor and one of Margaret’s
confessors, and this was commissioned by Giovanni da Castiglione, a friar minor
who was also among her confessors and an inquisitor. In 1318 the commune of
Cortona petitioned the Papal See for Margaret’s canonisation, but along with
other religious women of the era – such as Angela di Foligno and Clare di
Montefalco – the petitioned failed to gain approval. André Vauchez has
suggested that this was because of Margaret’s connection to the Joachimite and
vehement papal critic Ubertino da Casale (d.1330), who was exiled to a convent
by Pope Benedict XI (Vauchez 2005: 76-77).However, it should be
noted that the fact that she came from a humble origin and that she was not a
virgin were also severe hindrances for her enrollment in the sanctorale, since these prerequisites
were highly valued by the curia in this period.

Saint Margaret in penitence, Antonio Bresciani (1720-1817)

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Although Margaret never formally obtained an
official papal confirmation of her sanctity, she seems to have been venerated
in Cortona for centuries after her death. In 1515, the diocese of Cortona was
allowed to celebrate her feast, but her formal canonization did not take place
until 1728. Because of this, the 18th century saw a flourishing of
art featuring Margaret, and she was rendered by several of Italy’s greatest
artists. In much of her spiritual work Margaret fits well into the ideal of
female religiosity of the thirteenth century, but in her excessive penitence
and her troubled past which did not align with the ideals of life-long purity
in late-medieval sainthood, she was also untypical of the many women venerated
as saints in Italy at that time.

Saint Margaret of Cortona, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682/83-1754)

Courtesy of Wikimedia

For other late-medieval Italian female saints, see the following blogposts:

torsdag 12. februar 2015

Royal 2 B III, psalter, Netherlands, minatures from 2nd or 3rd quarter of 13th Century

Courtesy of British Library

Today I have been teaching on Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin, and we had a look at the ways in which Saint Martin imitated Christ. One of these ways was Martin’s performance of humility by washing the feet of his visitors, thus imitating Christ’s humility as he washed the feet of his disciples (cf. John 13:1-17). Martin performs this imitation Christi in two ways. The first episode we encounter is where he, while still an unbaptised soldier, reverses the hierarchy in the relationship between him and his slave, and Sulpicius Severus tells us that “it was usually Martin who pulled his slave’s boots off and cleaned them, and when they took their meals together it was often Martin who served at table” (II.5, translated by Carolinne White). Towards the end of the book, Sulpicius tells of his own meeting with the aged Martin, then bishop of Tours, and the link with Christ becomes clearer as we are told that Martin “himself brought water to was our hands. In the evening he washed our feet himself and we did not have the courage to resist or refuse” (XXV.3, translated by Carolinne White).

The washing of feet is in Christian thought seen
as one of the ultimate signs of Christ’s humility. In medieval monasteries, it
entered the liturgy during the Easter celebration. The liturgical calendar,
strictly observed at all monasteries, is divided into the sanctorale, the celebration of saints, and the temporale, the commemoration of the life and times of Christ. These
two liturgical layers run parallel, and the tempora
Christi are re-enacted in the monastic liturgy. As part of this
re-enactment it was customary to invite twelve beggars into church and feed
them and to have the high clergy wash their feet.

Christ washing the feet of his disciples

Harley 1810, Eastern Mediterranean, last quarter of 12th century or first half of 13th Century

Courtesy of British Library

This ritual of imitation is sometimes also found
in hagiography, where the washing of feet is used to illustrate the virtue of
humility, a virtue expected of all Christians and all saints, but perhaps
particularly from the more high-born, in keeping with the Gospel text from Luke
stating that those who put themselves high shall be brought low and vice versa.

One example of this episode in a hagiographic
context can be found in Bede’s life of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. In chapter
five Bede recounts how Cuthbert performed his office as guestmaster at the
monastery of Ripon, and how Cuthbert had been tested by God in the following
way:

Going out in the early morning from the
inner buildings of the monastery to the guests’ chamber, he found a certain youth
sitting within, and, thinking that he was of the race of men, he speedily
welcomed him with accustomed kindness. He gave him water to wash his hands; he
washed his feet and wiped them with a towel and placed them in his bosom so as
to chafe them humbly with his hands; and asked him to wait until the third hour
of the day and be refreshed with food”
- Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti, translated by Bertram Colgrave (Colgrave 1969:
179)

The guest turns out to be an angel of the Lord,
and for his kindness in his imitation Christi,
Cuthbert is rewarded with loaves of heavenly bread which “excel the lily in
whiteness, the rose in fragrance, and honey in taste.”

The exercise of humility was, as stated, a highly valued virtue in the saints.
In the case of royal saints, the humility and the spurning of the world were emphasised
with a typical monastic flair for irony. In the case of Louis IX of France
(d.1270, can.1297), his humility was one of the primary virtues for which he
was praised during the long canonisation proceedings. In his proper imitation
of humilitas Christi, Louis washed
the feet of three poor men. This episode can be found in one of the earliest hagiographies
about Louis, written in the 1270s by the royal confessor Geoffrey of Beaulieu:

It was his practice
on any given Saturday to wash the feet of the three of the poorer and older men
who could be found, which he did on bended knee, humbly, piously, and in a most
secret place. After washing, he dried their feet and humbly kissed them. In
similar fashion he brought water to wash their hands, which he kissed in the
same way. He then provided a certain sum of money to each, and he himself
waited upon them as they ate.
- Geoffrey of Beaulieu, The Life and Saintly Comportment of Louis, Former King
of the Franks, of Pious Memory, translated by Larry Field (Gaposchkin and S.
Field 2014: 77

Louis serving the poor

Royal 16 G VI, Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, France, between 1332 and 1350

Courtesy of British Library

Geoffrey then adds another episode to the
chapter:

[O]nce on a certain Sabbath, when he was at the Abbey of Clairvaux, he desired
to take part in the washing of the feet of the monks, which they call the “mandate.”
That is, according to the custom of their order, after Vespers, the monks wash
each other’s feet with solemn devotion. The king himself, out of humility, many
times wished to lay aside his cloak and humbly wash the feet of the servants of
God with his own hands, on bended knees.
- Geoffrey of Beaulieu, The Life and Saintly Comportment of Louis, Former King
of the Franks, of Pious Memory, translated by Larry Field (Gaposchkin and S.
Field 2014: 78

Geoffrey here hammers home that Louis was a man of exceptional humility, and he
concludes his chapter by saying “I do not know if there was another person of
his station who was his equal in all the world.”

These episodes are just a few of the many examples of the importance of the
foot-washing ritual in Christian hagiography, and the primacy of humility that
was one of the many constants in medieval moral theology. The case of Louis IX
also illustrates that to the persons of royal birth, it was necessary for them
to subvert that hierarchy by which they were given the power to rule if they
were to be worthy of a place in the sanctorale.

fredag 6. februar 2015

I’m currently doing some reading in Legenda Aurea, the Dominican Jacobus de
Voragine’s great compendium of saints’ legends and other liturgical feasts,
designed to be a reference book for homilists. Jacobus compiled these stories
in the 1260s and relied on a wide range of Christian authors, often citing
contradicting views on certain matters as a summary of the views held by
previous authors. Legenda Aurea is
first and foremost a conservative compilation, since it contains only five
saints from Jacobus’ own time or the preceding century. Four of these modern
saints are connected with the vogue of mendicant sanctity that dominated the
religious sentiments of the Latin Mediterranean in the thirteenth century.
These are the mendicant founders Francis (d.1226) and Dominic (d.1221), the
Dominican friar and martyr Peter of Verona (d.1252) and the Franciscan tertiary
Elizabeth of Hungary (d.1231). The last of the modern saints is Thomas Becket
(d.1170) whose martyrdom in Canterbury cathedral Jacobus erroneously dates to
1174, the year after his canonization by Pope Alexander III.

This incorrect date suggests that although Jacobus was extremely well-read and
could draw references from a long and impressive list of sources, his knowledge
of English material was quite sparse. Jacobus’ lack of familiarity with English
hagiography becomes all the more apparent when you compare his original work
with the adaptations from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England such as
the Gilte Legende, the South English Legendary and the Nova Legenda Anglie. Considering that
Jacobus probably envisioned only a relatively local circulation of his work,
his lack of English material is neither surprising nor something that merits rebuke,
but it does result in the occasional misinformation, such as the year of Becket’s
death.

Another piece of information is an interesting anecdote appended to his chapter
on St John the Apostle. Jacobus writes (in William Granger Ryan’s American translation):

Saint Edmund [of East Anglia], king of
England, never refused anyone who asked a favor in the name of Saint John the
Evangelist. Thus it happened one day when the royal chamberlain was absent that
a pilgrim importuned the king in the saint’s name for an alms [sic]. The king,
having nothing else at hand, gave him the precious ring from his finger. Some
time later an English soldier on overseas duty received the ring from the same
pilgrim, to be restored to the king with the following message: “He for whose
love you gave this ring sends it back to you.” Hence it was obvious that Saint
John had appeared to him in the guise of a pilgrim.

This anecdote is significant for several
reasons. First of all because it shows an interesting confluence of two of
high-medieval England’s most important saints: Edmund of East Anglia and Edward
the Confessor. The story of the king giving his ring to Saint John in disguise
belongs to the legend of Edward the Confessor and is perhaps one of the most
famous miracles from his hagiographies. It first appears in Aelred of Rievaulx’s
Vita Sancti Edwardi Regis, a work
written for the translation of Edward’s body in 1163, and which was
commissioned by Lawrence, abbot of Westminster. The ring became Edward’s main
attribute and remained so throughout the Middle Ages, as seen below from a
calendar page from the early 1400s.

Jacobus’ attribution of this episode to the
legend of St Edmund is also significant because it allows us a glimpse of the
close relationship between those cults from the twelfth century onwards. Edmund
had been venerated as a saint since the late ninth century, and his cult centre
had been at Bury St Edmunds from the start. At the turn of the eleventh century
and onwards, the cult of St Edmund experienced an increased literary output of
hagiographical and liturgical material. Herman the Archdeacon wrote De Miracula Sancti Edmundi c.1100 and
c.1125 a new office was composed for Bury’s patron. In the literature of Bury’s
long twelfth century, King Edward the Confessor – universally respected in
English history – was invoked as one of Edmund’s devotees, and as a just king
who granted the abbey many valuable charters. The generosity of Edward was a
recurring feature, appearing both in Herman’s De Miracula and Jocelin’s late-twelfth-century Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds.

Edward the Confessor was not canonised until 1161 and his cult was a product of
Westminster Abbey and the political interests of King Henry II. Edward’s cult
had a brief but intense first period of popularity which rapidly diminished at
the explosive growth of the cult of Thomas Becket in the 1170s. Becket’s cult
did not affect the cult of Edmund in the same way, much thanks to Bury being a
thriving literary centre, and brief anecdotes in late-twelfth-century
historiographies – such as Benedict of Peterborough’s Gesta Henrici II and Ralph Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum – suggests that Edmund enjoyed a much wider
and more stable veneration than did Edward.

From the thirteenth century onwards, the two
royal saints began to appear together in both art and literature. We don’t know
which is the earliest example of this. Edward and Edmund – along with two
others – are both listed among England’s peaceable kings in the anonymous Anglo-Norman
Le Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei
from the 1240s, and in the late 1300s William Langland states in Piers Plowman that Edmund and Edward
were both followed by the personification of Charity. To name some of the
examples of these two appearing together in art, we have a glass cycle in
Amiens from c.1280, and perhaps the most famous instance of them all, the
Wilton Diptych where they appear together with John the Baptist as patron for
the young Richard II.

The Wilton Diptych

Edmund and Edward both displaying their most well-known attributes

Courtesy of Wikimedia

In all these instances mentioned above the
pairing of Edmund of Edward have been done deliberately, while in Jacobus’ Legenda Aurea the two saints have
blended together by mistake. The interesting question is whether this mistake
was owing to Jacobus’ own faulty memory, having heard the story from one of the
many English pilgrims in Italy and then confused the characters, or whether the
story was transmitted to Jacobus in the way he recorded it. In any case, the
faulty attribution of the miracle of the ring to Edmund of East Anglia,
suggests that by the latter half of the thirteenth century, the two royal
patrons of England may already have begun to be paired together, not only in
art and literature but also in the common imagination.

Aelred of Rievaulx, The Life of Saint
Edward, King and Confessor, translated by Jane Patricia Freeland and
published in Dutton, Marsha (ed.), Aelred
of Rievaulx: The Historical Works, Cistercian Publications, 2005

Om meg

Norwegian medievalist, bibliophile, lover of art, music and food. This blog is a mixture of things personal and scholarly and it serves as a venue for me to share things I find interesting with likeminded people.